Zero Carbon Design 2030: Looking forward to 2022

The world is working towards zero carbon, but if we don’t get there quickly enough the consequences are fairly obvious to everyone. For building design, zero carbon essentially means low energy, low to zero embodied carbon, no fossil fuels and powered by renewables. The World Green Building Council’s Net Zero Carbon Building Commitment, of which Cundall is a founding signatory, requires all new buildings to be zero carbon no later than 2030, and all existing buildings to transition to zero carbon by 2050. To have any chance of limiting global heating to under two degrees we really need to do this much sooner.

Cundall launched Zero Carbon Design 2030 (ZCD30) in September 2021 with a commitment that we will not work on projects that are not zero carbon after 2030. We have set ourselves interim goals over the next nine years, with the first being that by the end of 2022 we will prepare and issue zero carbon pathways on all of our new projects. These will clearly set out to our clients how their project can be zero carbon, and the design solutions that Cundall can provide to support this.

The goals are milestones along our journey, but ZCD30 is so much more than a series of targets. It is fundamentally about delivering great design, collaboration and knowledge sharing, driving change in our industry, making zero carbon business-as-usual, and creating a legacy, both personal and corporate, that we can all be proud of. To make this happen we need to engage, empower and enthuse everyone in Cundall to be involved and to know that they can make a difference.

Since the launch I have been overwhelmed with the enthusiasm and hard work of the teams, advocates and core team in supporting ZCD30. In just a few months over 40 individual team plans have been created – plans which set out how each team will work towards supporting and achieving the overall goals, but at a pace that suits their location and what they do in Cundall. Setting interim, bite size targets, then celebrating their achievement is a central component of the team plans. Rome wasn’t built in a day!

The plans have also identified the tools we have, the tools we need to develop, and some of the training and resources needed to support our teams. We are already seeing teams come together to develop some of the tools and resources we need, and this will be a key focus for 2022.

Following feedback from teams we are currently developing a draft template Zero Carbon Pathway document to use as a starting point on projects. This will be released in February and located on the Zero Carbon Design 2030 SharePoint site together with other resources including the 40+ ZCD Design Guides, project target templates and presentation slides. We look to our people to give us feedback and make suggestions on what would help them to deliver solutions to support zero carbon on every project we do.

Thank you all for your support so far and I am really excited about the year ahead as we start to make zero carbon something we just do. And please reach out to the advocates or core team if you want to be more actively involved or have great ideas that will help drive us forward. In the words of Margaret Mead, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.”